


I can't believe I forgot

by mountain_ash



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Derek and Scott are Brothers, Fluff, Mating Rituals, One Shot, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Stiles is Derek's Anchor, Werewolf Mates, complete drabble, mention of masturbation, random pack members
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_ash/pseuds/mountain_ash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off a prompt involving soulmates, lacrosse fields, fuzzy memories, and identifying marks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can't believe I forgot

Stiles woke with a bit of a hangover one Sunday, which was weird because he hadn’t drunk the night before. Actually, what did he do the night before? Why couldn’t he remember? He figured there was only one way to find out as he reached for his phone.

_Stiles: Derek! Lacrosse practice? 1 hour?_

 

His phone buzzed barely thirty seconds later. If his head weren’t throbbing slightly he would realize it was strange that Derek was responding so quickly.

 

_Derek: I’ll pick you up. You probably feel like shit._

 

And how does Derek know that? What did they do last night?

 

_Stiles: You’re a Godsend._

 

Not even thirty seconds pass.

 

_Derek: Just for you._

 

Somehow Stiles still hadn’t realized this wasn’t typical Derek.

 

An hour later Stiles had downed a cup of coffee and two of water and was snarfing down a bowl of Wheaties when he heard a knock at the door. Spoon in mouth and bowl in one hand he flung the door open to find Derek waiting for him. It was hard for Stiles to pinpoint, but something about him was different. He looked uncharacteristically shy, but seemed to simultaneously emit a radiance that wouldn’t allow Stiles to look away.

 

Derek ducked his head down, his cheeks coloring wildly under Stiles’s gaze. Looking up from under his eyelashes in a way that made Stiles’s stomach somersault in a bizarre new way, Derek asked, “You almost ready?”

 

“Uh, yeah just a sex.” Stiles's eyes opened wide in horror. “Sec! I meant sec!” Where had that little Freudian slip come from? Stiles turned quickly back toward the kitchen to hide his own blush as Derek snickered a little behind him. Cramming the rest of the cereal into his mouth to keep from saying anything else incriminating, Stiles grabbed his lacrosse stick and bag before putting his bowl in the dishwasher and trotting back out to meet Derek at his Camaro. Seeing Derek leaning against the car felt like deja vu but Stiles shook off the feeling.

 

Sliding into the smooth leather passenger seat, he groaned in appreciation. “It’s been almost two years and I still can’t believe you got this for your sixteenth birthday.”

 

Derek chuckled, shaking his head softly. "Uh uh. I've been allowed to drive it. I only get to have it once I can pay the insurance."

 

“You better get on that then. I want you to drive me everywhere.”

 

"You have any idea how much insurance for a teenage boy costs? I'd be working so much I’d never have time to see you."

 

The thought of Derek not having time for him was surprisingly painful. "Well I need you all to myself before you go to college, so I guess that can wait." Apparently it made him surprisingly possessive as well.

 

Derek cleared his throat before speaking with a slightly wobbly voice. "Are you picking me over Scott?"

 

Stiles blinked a few times, astounded by the fact that his best friend hadn't been on his mind all morning. "Oh, I guess he just goes without saying?" It came out as a question. When had Scott's older brother become more important than Scott? Come to think of it, Heather hadn’t been on his mind either.

 

They got to the fields then and proceeded to spend the next hour and a half taking turns shooting on each other in goal. Eventually practice devolved into half hearted shots and fits of giggles and Derek called it a day.

 

"Hey you want to go back to back to my place? Watch a movie or something?"

 

"Oh, uh, I'd love to but Heather and I have plans this afternoon." Stiles felt his heart sink uncomfortably as he remembered his plans to break up with her. He wished he could forego the uncomfortable conversation and just spend the afternoon with Derek, but he was distracted from those thoughts by the look of utter confusion on the other teen's face. "What?"

 

"You broke up with her last night..." Derek said hesitantly. "You don't even remember that?"

 

"Oh. Why don’t I remember that?" Stiles felt strangely relieved by the information. "Wait what do you mean 'don't even remember'? Did you do some weird werewolfy thing to me?"

 

Derek's face turned bright red and he shuffled his cleats nervously in the dirt. "Um, k-kind of. On accident. Out of my control."

 

Stiles looked at Derek skeptically. He figured he couldn’t remember last night because he had just gone to bed early or something, but now he was realizing his entire sense of time was screwed up and Derek was hiding something from him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

 

“You should sit down.” Stiles sat down rigidly on the bleachers as if on command. “Have you looked at your foot yet?”

 

“My feet?” Stiles asked incredulously. “No.” And without another word he began fumbling with his cleat laces and pulling at his socks. He was looking at his feet, not understanding what Derek was getting at when he saw a flash of it on the outside of his foot. Pulling his left foot up onto his right leg, Stiles stared at the tattoo of a small anchor with part of a chain drifting up towards the side of his foot. Only it couldn’t be a tattoo because it wasn’t red or itchy or raw, and it hadn’t been there yesterday. It wasn’t pen either though.

 

“What is going on Derek? I am missing something huge and you know what it is."

 

Derek’s nervous swallow was audible as he began pulling off his right cleat and sock. There on the outside of his foot, with the beginnings of a chain hanging from its side, was the outline of a little sailboat. Stiles watched in wonder, his heart pounding out of his chest, as Derek put his foot beside his own and the ends of both chains met on contact. Stiles’s eyes fluttered closed and the night before rushed back to him.

~~~~~~~~

 

It was the last weekend before they were to head back to school. Scott and Stiles would be sophomores and Derek was going to be a senior. They had decided to have one last homework-free hurrah with a bonfire, so they’d invited the whole pack: Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Lydia, Jackson, Allison, and Kira.

 

Stiles remembered thinking something was different with Derek as he had set the wood up for the fire, and it suddenly hit him as he sat across the flames from the wolf that Kate wasn’t there. Derek caught him staring and held his gaze with a surprised ferocity.

 

He was dragged out of his Derek-induced trance when Kira pinched his knee. “You guys having a staring contest or something?” She teased.

 

Clearing his throat and trying to tamp down the onslaught of warmth invading his stomach, Stiles attempted a glib shrug. “I was about to win too.” He turned his attention to Derek then, jerking his head in the direction of the cars. “Can I talk to you for a bit?”

 

The wolf nodded as if still dazed and stood to walk with Stiles as far from the group as he could get them.

 

“Kate broke up with me this morning.” Derek offered.

 

“Oh.” Stiles couldn’t think of anything more meaningful to offer. He had wanted Derek since he had accidentally walked in on him jacking off in his room in the sixth grade and realized the older boy did a lot more for him than just help him with his Spanish homework. Stiles had done his best to trample those feelings by intensifying his efforts to win Lydia’s heart with his ten-year-plan, but that stopped being enough when Derek had started dating Kate at the beginning of his junior year and Stiles couldn’t ignore his disappointment.

 

Heather had moved back to Beacon Hills during the second semester of freshman year and he offered to help her get the hang of the school since they had been childhood friends. They hit it off and she’d asked him to the Spring Fling and he’d said yes because Lydia had Jackson and he was trying to ignore the fact that Derek had Kate. He really did like Heather, but things hadn’t been going well between them that summer and he was planning to break it off with her before school started so they could have a fresh start.

 

They reached the cars then and Derek leaned against his Camaro as he continued to stare at the ground nervously. “What are you thinking about?”

 

“I’ve wanted you since I was 12.” Stiles said in a rush, like the words were being pulled out against his will.

 

Derek’s eyes flicked up to meet his, brimming in equal measure with confusion and eagerness. “But Heather.”

 

“You had Kate.” Stiles was surprised by the vitriol in his tone.

 

The wolf’s eyes widened in amazement, and Stiles saw his cheeks flush under the street light. “Oh my God, I’m so stupid. I thought I cared about you so much because you were Scott’s friend. Like you were another brother.” Stiles breath caught as he let himself hope this was going where he thought it was. “And then I met Kate and she was amazing and I thought I had found it, but then you started dating Heather and I knew.”

 

“Found what, Derek? Knew what?” Stiles pressed forward until he stood directly in front of Derek.

 

“Born wolves have mates. I thought Kate was mine, but then I could never stop thinking of you being with Heather and I realized you were mine, not her.”

 

‘Mine’ rang in Stiles’s mind until he realized he had started hyperventilating a little and forced himself to calm down. “I need- I need to go home. I need to end it with Heather. And sleep and think. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

 

“Stiles you might not-” “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Stiles interrupted, and he ran off to tell the pack he had to leave early. They grumbled half-hearted pleas for him to stay, but most had heard the conversation with invasive werewolf hearing, and knew he needed to go.

 

Heather met him at his house and he broke up with her on his front steps and she just smiled at him sadly and said, “Good luck with Derek.” He didn't deserve how nice she was and felt horrible at how badly he apparently hidden his feelings for Derek.

~~~~~~~~

 

His eyes opened wide as the memory came to an end and he looked down at their joined feet to see the mark fade.

 

"Mates.” He said in wonderment.

 

“You remember now.” It wasn’t a question.

 

“You knew all this would happen?” Stiles was still very confused, but the warm and pleasant feeling permeating his body wasn’t allowing for negative feelings like frustration or irritation that Derek had hidden something so important from him.

 

“Not for sure. It happens sometimes, when a werewolf has a human mate but the awareness doesn’t match up right.” Derek looked to be trying to figure something out before continuing. “I think you must have realized back in middle school, which was why you had trouble moving on when I started dating Kate. I didn’t realize it back then because you had barely hit puberty and you were still kind of a little kid to me. I only realized once you started dating Heather."

 

“Why didn’t you do anything about it then?”

 

“We’re taught that we’re supposed to wait until our mate figures it out. I was going to break up with Kate and I figured you would break up with Heather eventually, but then I learned Kate was a hunter and he she kind of threatened me into staying with her.”

 

“Jeez, Derek I’m sorry. And what’s with me forgetting everything last night?”

 

Derek scoffed at that. “That’s dumb werewolf magic for you. It happens when one or both of the mates still has an attachment to someone else when the connection is finally discovered. If they’re really supposed to be mates, it’ll happen more naturally later and they’ll find each other again once they can actually be together. The tattoo symbolizes what’s special about their bond, and when the two halves of it are brought together, the memories come back.”

 

Stiles sat there dumbly for a moment letting the same warmth from the night before wash through his body. Despite the flood of information and rush of feelings he could feel swirling in his gut, his heart was surprisingly calm as though suddenly learning that Derek was his mate was the most natural thing in the world. He started giggling as the force of their teenage stupidity hit him.

 

“You okay?” Derek looked genuinely concerned.

 

“I just can’t believe how dumb we’ve been.” Stiles turned to look thoroughly at Derek for a while and then without thinking he leaned in and pressed his lips to Derek’s. It was a chaste kiss, full with long repressed feelings and Stiles felt himself chasing it as he grabbed Derek gently by the hair at the back of his head. Derek met his eagerness by cupping his cheek and pressing deeper into the kiss. His lips were soft and warm and fit against Stiles’s in a way he never could have imagined.

   

When they pulled apart, Stiles shot Derek a mischievous grin. “I guess I really will need as much time alone with you as I can get.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments always appreciated and come visit me on [tumblr](http://a-mountain-ash.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
